Barriers to Higher Education for Students with Bipolar Disorder: A Critical Social Model Perspective

Allison K. Kruse and Sushil K. Oswal
Additional contact information
Allison K. Kruse: School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, USA
Sushil K. Oswal: School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, USA

Social Inclusion, 2018, vol. 6, issue 4, 194-206

Abstract: Employing some of the features of participatory research methodology, a disabled faculty joins a student with mental health diagnosis to examine the factors that hinder or enable success for this group. The theoretical framework or scholarly bearings for the study comes from the critical social model of disability, disability services scholarship in the United States, and education theory literature on “student success”. With a particular focus on students with bipolar disorder, the article highlights the gaps in disability scholarship on this specific group while underscoring the oppression experienced by them through the inclusion of an autoethnographic segment by the primary author in this collaborative, scholarly work. The model of access, we propose, moves beyond accommodations—which are often retrofits or after the thought arrangements made by an institution—and asks for environmental support, social and institutional inclusion, and consideration for students with psychiatric health diagnosis. This article not only presents an array of problems in the United States academy but also a set of recommendations for solving these problems. Going beyond the regime of retrofit accommodations, we ask for an overhaul of institutional policies, infrastructures, and curricula so that the academy is inclusive of neurodiverse bodies and appreciates their difference.

Keywords: academic ableism; autoethnography; bipolar disorder; critical social model; disability; disability accommodations; disclosure in higher education; psychiatric health diagnosis; retrofits; student success; students with mental disabilities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/1682 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v6:y:2018:i:4:p:194-206

DOI: 10.17645/si.v6i4.1682

Access Statistics for this article

Social Inclusion is currently edited by Mariana Pires

More articles in Social Inclusion from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().